10 days and counting…

I must admit that every single day I see that little fella he makes my heart just sing. I’ve never really experienced anything like having a son. It really is one of those once in a lifetime experiences. He’s simply the coolest thing ever!

Each time I come into that room and see his little form in the incubator I get so excited! Every day with him in our lives truely is a gift. Other fathers will understand what I’m talking about – and for those guys that have no clue but are planning on eventually being Dads… wow your in for some awesome times ahead.

I mean look at all the stress I’m under, his life hangs in the balance, lindsay is sick, we’re moving, we’ve had to juggle finances to allow for the uniquiness of the pregnancy.. not to mention just the general stresses of the holiday season… but every time I see him.. he has this ability to melt away all of that and become this bright light in an otherwise dark place. Thank you for that Ayden.. very much.

So lets get to the news… now that I’ve had my little ramble.

Ayden early on was not eating… they tried as you know from reading the blogs – to give him 1cc of mamma’s milk into his tummy. ( they inject it via feeding tube right into his tummy ) this resulted in all sorts of little green bile globules returning up the feeding tube. (not to worry that’s normal we’re told) however the little guy was losing weight. born at 790grams he was down to 660grams just a few days ago. Thursday night when we went down the had tried to feed him 1cc of milkat 4pm – then the plan was every 4hours after that another 1cc of milk. Not only did he take the 1cc each 4 hours, Friday they up’d him to 1cc every 2 hours… late friday afternoon they decided okay he can take that.. lets make it 2cc’s every 2 hours. And when we last saw him Friday evening… we were told that he made one of the largest poo’s our nurse has seen for a baby his size… Ahhh that’s my little stinker.. (wink – papa’s proud) BTW – that’s important because it means his digestive system is working. One of the last of the systems we needed to make sure was recovering from the infection. Did I go on about the infection? I must have.. right I did in the post “Mysteries Revealed” so ya with his entire body being infected. Every organ was enflammed – and side note the Dr stressed to us that this was incredibly painful for Ayden… He basically said that we’ll never know the amount of pain he’s suffered through and wouldn’t want to.

So we got poo, we got pee and we got eating… all crucial parts of life.

The Nurses in the hospital refer to Ayden as a “Swinger” no no – he’s to young for that.. you dirty people. Its because his oxygen levels in his blood fluctuate all the time.. this means that the machines that are around him, have their alarms ringing much of the time. As his oxygen level goes from 84% to 87% and then back. This juggling act happens over and over all the time. It’s nothing to be concerned with it happens in enough babies to coin the term “Swinger” Our Nurse Amy says “this alarm ding ding ding.. we hear as “I’m Oh Kay”…

and she assures us as we spend more time on the ward that we’ll learn the sounds and the pitches of the assorted rings. Even a mother who was next to us told us.. “Oh you’ll get used to it… I’ve been here for 4 months”